Housekeeper to His Heart

Wren's POV "Friday, Ms. Bruce. After that, we give your sister's spot to the next patient on the list." The woman from Dr. Marsh's office tried to soften the news, but somehow that made it harder to hear. "I'll have it by Friday," I said. "I promise." My bank account held just four hundred and twelve dollars. Maya's therapy cost four thousand a month, and she had ten months left in the program. Forty thousand dollars. After that, my sister would walk on her own. I hung up before the woman could hear my voice shake. I set the phone on the passenger seat and looked up at the gate. It was tall and black, with cameras on top that turned to follow my car. The agency had called the job "a private household, name withheld." The pay was ten thousand dollars a month, with a room. All I had to do was cook well, clean fast, and never talk about what I saw. That's the easiest money in the world, I'd thought. Then the gates swung open, and I saw the letters worked into the iron arch above them. K I N G S T O N. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Turn around, Wren. My phone buzzed. It was Maya, with a photo of herself at the gym, tongue out, gripping the parallel bars with her leg brace strapped on. Underneath she'd typed: EIGHT STEPS TODAY. Tell me I'm amazing. Eight steps. Last month it was three. I put the car in drive and went through the gate. * * * A woman waited at the bottom of the drive with a clipboard. Her sunglasses were pushed up into hair that didn't move in the wind. "Wren Bruce?" "Yes." "Sofia Reyes. I handle Mr. Kingston's public image. While you're here, I handle you too." She didn't smile. "Sign here, here, and here." "What is it?" "A nondisclosure agreement. You don't talk about this house, the people in it, or anything you see. If you do, you owe the Kingston family five hundred thousand dollars." She held out a pen. "Your first month's pay is already in your account. Go ahead and check." I checked. Ten thousand dollars sat on my screen. Dr. Marsh. Rent. Maya's new brace. For the first time in two years, I could breathe. I signed. "Rules," Sofia said, walking me up the steps. "No press. No photos. Stay out of the east wing. And the last door in the staff hallway stays locked. You don't open it, you don't clean it, and you don't ask about it." "Understood." "They always say that." The front hall was so long my footsteps echoed. At the top of the staircase stood a man with one hand on the railing. I had prepared for this, in the car, in the drive, in the thirty seconds it took Sofia to find the right page. I had practiced my face. Calm. Blank. A stranger's face. It didn't matter. He looked straight at me, and there was nothing in his eyes at all. Three years since I'd seen him up close. He was thinner now, older around the mouth. But I knew the line of that jaw. I knew the little scar through his left eyebrow better than I knew my own handwriting. Hale Kingston. "Is this the new one?" he asked Sofia. "Wren Bruce. Highly recommended." "They all are." He came down three steps. "Does she cook?" "I do," I said. His hand tightened on the railing. Just once, just for a second. If I hadn't spent a whole summer learning every small thing his body did when he was hiding something, I would have missed it. He knew me. He knew exactly who I was. And he was pretending he didn't. "Careful, Sofia." A younger man leaned in the arch of the dining room, grinning. "Last one lasted eleven days." "Nash," Sofia said. "I'm only being friendly. Brother, aren't you going to welcome her?" "Ms. Bruce," Hale said, flat and polite, the way you'd speak to a stranger at a bank. "Breakfast is at seven." He turned and walked upstairs without looking back. * * * Sofia walked me through the ground floor at a pace that said she had better things to do. "Kitchen. Dining room. Library. Don't move anything." She stopped at a pair of tall doors and pushed one open. "Trophy room. You'll dust on Thursdays." I stepped inside. The room was full of shapes under white sheets. Dozens of them stood in rows on glass shelves, covered the way you cover furniture in a house where someone has died. Only one thing was uncovered. A single silver cup sat on a small table by the window. I read the engraving from across the room. DUNMORE 300. KINGSTON & WHITFIELD. WINNERS. For a moment, I couldn't move. I had stood in the pit lane the night they won that cup. I was the one who cleaned the engine afterward, at three in the morning, humming, while two exhausted boys sprayed each other with warm soda. "Everything in here was covered eighteen months ago," Sofia said quietly. "Except that. Mr. Kingston won't let anyone move it. You can dust around it. You don't touch it." "Okay." "You've gone pale." "It's the dust." "It's always the dust," Sofia said, and closed the door. * * * My room was small and clean. A bed, a dresser, a window that looked out on a garden left to grow wild. I unpacked in ten minutes. At six o'clock, I cooked my first dinner in the Kingston kitchen. Roast chicken, lemon potatoes, green beans with garlic. Sofia had said the family ate at six. By six fifteen, nobody had come. Nash showed up at six thirty. He ate standing at the counter, straight from the pan, and said it was the best thing he'd tasted in a year. "Don't tell my brother," he said, licking his thumb. "He'll want you to stay forever." He said it like a joke. I couldn't tell whether he was joking. Hale never came down. I fixed a plate anyway and left it covered on the dining table. An hour later, it was still there, cold and untouched. At eight, Sofia appeared in the kitchen doorway. "One more thing. Every night at eight, you'll make a small plate. Plain. Chicken or fish, rice or potatoes, no spice. Cover it and leave it at the end of the counter." "Who's it for?" "The house." "The house eats?" "Wren." Her voice was tired, not angry. "Please don't ask." I made the plate. I turned to wash the pan, and when I turned back, the counter was empty. I hadn't heard a thing. At the far end of the staff hallway stood the door Sofia had warned me about. Dark wood. Brass lock. No window. I walked past it twice that evening, and both times I didn't look at it, which is how you know you're looking. I texted Maya a heart. I told her the job was fine. I told her the house was big. I did not tell her whose house it was. At two in the morning, glass shattered somewhere above me. Then a shout. Not an angry one. The kind a person makes when something hurts too much to hold in. Before I could think it through, I was out of bed. My door opened before I reached it, and Sofia stood in the hall in a robe, her hair down, her face white. "Stay in your room." "Someone's hurt—" "Wren." She said my name like a plea. "Please. This doesn't concern you." She pulled the door shut. Her footsteps ran away toward the stairs. I counted to ten. Then I opened the door and followed. The study door stood open a hand's width, lamplight spilling across the hall carpet. I pushed it. Broken glass covered the floor, shining like spilled ice. A picture frame lay in pieces. Photographs were scattered everywhere. Men in racing suits. A car on a wet track. A car wrapped in fire. Hale Kingston was on his knees in the middle of it. He wasn't throwing anything. He wasn't shouting. He was folded forward with one hand over his mouth and his shoulders shaking, as if something he'd kept locked up for years had finally kicked down the door. I should have left. Instead, my shoe crunched on a piece of glass, and he looked up. He looked directly at me. For a moment, before the mask came back, he said my name. "Wren." Not Ms. Bruce. Just my name, cracked down the middle. Then I saw what he was holding. It was a photograph, soft and creased from being held too many times. A girl in a grease-stained shirt, laughing, with her arm around a boy in a racing suit. I knew that girl. I had been her, three summers ago. He hadn't thrown that one away.